Step onto the property ladder

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Thu 11 Oct 2018

Step onto the property ladder

The high price of housing, the capital’s rising population and Brexit jitters are combining to shut first-time buyers out of the property market, according to Professor Tony Travers of the London School of Economics.

A slow-down in new homes completions is adding to young buyers’ woes, confirmed by a report from the Office of National Statistics, which shows a 10 per cent plunge in under-40s home ownership.

“London’s population was 6.6 million in the Eighties and is now near nine million, adding two Birminghams and a Leeds. Yet we are building homes at half the rate needed,” Travers says.

He adds that tighter migration policy post-Brexit could exclude foreign construction workers from the industry, further slowing housebuilding.

At the recent Conservative Party conference, Prime Minister Theresa May scrapped a cap on council borrowing to allow them to build more low-cost homes and suggested a levy could be imposed on foreign buyers purchasing property in the UK.

However, these policies alone won’t get young Londoners on the property ladder, say experts.

Many renters are now turning to online investment funds, relying on charitable housing schemes or sharing with strangers to boost their saving capacity in a bid to overcome their first hurdle to home ownership — the need for a hefty deposit.

Here are some new approaches.

1. BE A LANDLORD FOR £100

Rose Jones, 32, has rented in London for the past nine years because she has never been able to afford to buy.

To bolster her savings she has invested with Bricklane, an online platform that buys and manages rental homes. “I liked the idea of investing in property to help me to save,” she says.

From £100:some investors in the Bricklaneonline rental home platform use profits to boost their deposit savings

The minimum investment is £100 but the typical investor sinks £3,000 into one of two property portfolios: a collection of rental flats in regional city centres such as Birmingham, Manchester and Leeds, or a London fund with lettings in popular or regeneration areas such as Clapham or Acton.

Investors have made 8.7 per cent from the regional fund and 10 per cent from London, through price appreciation and rental income.

Bricklane investors can sell their stake every two weeks at market value — provided there’s a willing buyer. Otherwise they have to wait for the fund to sell a property and free up cash.

One criticism is that Bricklane buys housing stock that could be made available to first-time buyers.

If investing in a property scheme feels just a bit too risky for you, there is another novel way of boosting your savings for a deposit on your first home.

Clare Graham, 29, a retail manager, and her primary school teacher partner Behn Kiverago, 38, took a break from mainstream renting and moved into the former electricity board offices in Bethnal Green as property guardians — tenants who live communally and pay cheap rents as stewards of a disused building.

They paid £950 per month, which was £1,000 a month less than they had been paying for a one-bedroom flat in Kennington.

Securing their future: Behn Kiverago and Clare Graham became live-in property guardians, paying lower rent in order to save the deposit for their new home​ (S Saunders )

Within eight months they’d saved enough to put a deposit on a shared-ownership property in Margate, Kent.

“We did it because renting in London is so expensive and Bethnal Green was ideal for work,” says Clare, who found the property through Live-In Guardians.

“It’s fun and you meet people. There is an app called Arthur Online, to report any issues.”

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